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Rand Paul uses Clinton attacks on new target

Sen. Rand Paul pulled the Bill Clinton barbs out again, criticizing Sen. Mitch McConnell’s challenger for being supported by the former president.
Rand Paul
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. speaks to reporters in front of federal court in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2014.

Sen. Rand Paul pulled the Bill Clinton barbs out again, criticizing Sen. Mitch McConnell’s challenger for being supported by the former president in an interview with NBC last week.

When asked about McConnell challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes' planned campaign event with the former president—which will take place on Tuesday—Paul slammed Grimes for Clinton’s decades-old affair.

“You know it concerns me,” Paul told NBC’s Kasie Hunt during an interview for Morning Joe. ”If the president of your network had relations with a 20-year-old girl who was there from college, I think the president of your network would be fired. We don’t accept that in the workplace. So if that’s what Bill Clinton did multiple times. Really they ought to be concerned about being associated with him.”

Paul also threw some fresh barbs at Grimes, tying her to the allegations against filmmaker Woody Allen.

In “Kentucky, we’re not quite Hollywood as far as accepting sort of different kind of things like that. Woody Allen is apparently a big contributor of hers, too. Woody Allen has been now accused of you know having relations with his children,” Paul said. “That’s not really acceptable in Kentucky. And I think she has to decide whether she’s representing Kentucky or Hollywood.”

When asked about the criticism, Grimes stuck to her talking points and attempted to avoid the controversies.

“Bill Clinton has been a friend of my family for many years,” Grimes said. 

During Clinton’s presidency, his “top focus was to create jobs, grow economy, which is the focus of our campaign, in contrast to Mitch McConnell, whose only job he has been looking out for is his own in 29 years,” Grimes told Hunt.

She deflected a further question on Allen, saying the allegations that he sexually assaulted Mia Farrow’s daughter, Dylan, “is something that is not for me to decide, it is for the legal system to decide.” 

Paul, a much-speculated potential 2016 candidate, has been bringing up the Monica Lewinsky affair regularly; many believe he is hoping to discredit former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of her potential 2016 run.